A Personal Matter (23 page)

“Where do you want to phone from?” he said, feeling like a criminal on the run.

“From the nearest grocery store. Then we can get some sausage and have a little lunch.”

“All right,” Bird said submissively, despite the unpleasant resistance he could feel originating in his stomach. “But do you think this friend of yours will agree to help?”

“That humpty-dumpty head of his makes him look benign, but he’s done some really awful things. For example…” Himiko lapsed unnaturally into silence and licked her lips with the snaking tip of her tongue. So the little man had perpetrated such horrors that Himiko lacked the courage to report them! Bird felt nauseous again, a lunch of sausages was out of the question. Truly.

“When we’ve phoned,” Bird said, “we should buy something for the baby to wear instead of worrying about sausage, and a bassinet, too. I guess a department store would be quickest. Not that I’m crazy about having to shop for baby clothes.”

“I’ll get what we need, Bird, you can wait in the car.”

“Just after she got pregnant I went shopping with my wife, it was lousy with mothers-to-be and screaming babies, there was something animal about the atmosphere in there.”

Bird glanced at Himiko and saw the color draining from her face; she must have felt nauseated, too. The two of them drove on, pale and silent. When Bird finally spoke, it was out of a need to abuse himself:

“When the baby is dead and my wife has recovered I imagine we’ll get a divorce. Then I’ll really be a free man now that I’ve been fired and all, and that’s surely what I’ve been dreaming about for years. Funny, I’m not particularly happy about it.”

The wind was stronger now and blowing from Bird toward Himiko, so that she had to raise her voice above it. When she spoke it was nearly a shout: “Bird, when you do become a free man, can’t we sell the house the way my father-in-law suggested and go to Africa together?”

Africa actually in sight! But it was only a desolate, insipid Africa that Bird was able to picture now. This was the first time since he had conceived his passion for it as a boy that Africa had lost its radiance inside him. A free man halted desolately in the gray Sahara. He had murdered an infant on the island hovering like a dragonfly at one hundred forty degrees east longitude. Then he had fled here, wandered all of Africa and failed to trap a single shrewmouse let alone a savage wart hog. Now he stood dumbly in the Sahara.

“Africa?” Bird said woodenly.

“You’re just a little withdrawn now, Bird, like a snail inside its shell. But you’ll get back your passion the minute you set foot on African soil.”

Bird was silent.

“Bird, I’ve become fascinated with your maps. I want you to get divorced so we can travel to Africa together and use them as real road maps. Last night I studied them for hours after you went to sleep and I guess I caught the fever, too. And now your freedom has become essential to me, Bird, I need you as a free man. You wouldn’t agree when I said we’d be dirtying
our hands
but you were wrong, Bird, really you were.
Our hands.
Bird, we’ll go to Africa together, won’t we!”

As if he were bringing up painful phlegm, “If that’s what you want,” Bird said.

“At first our relationship was only sexual, I was a sexual refuge from your anxiety and from your shame. But last night I realized that a passion for Africa was developing in me, too. And that means a new bond between us, Bird, now we have a map of Africa for a go-between. We’ve leaped from a merely sexual lowland to much higher ground, something I’d hoped would happen all along, and now I honestly feel it, Bird, the same passion! That’s why I’m introducing you to my doctor friend and dirtying my own hands along with yours!”

A web of cracks seemed to open in the low windshield as a white rain as fine as mist spattered the glass. The same instant, Bird and Himiko felt rain on their brows and in their eyes. The sky darkened in all directions as if dusk had suddenly arrived and a waspish whirlwind rose. “Is there a roof you can put on this car?” Bird said like a mournful idiot. “Otherwise, the baby will get all wet.”

B
Y
the time Bird had finished putting up the convertible’s black hood the wind careening around the alley like a frightened chicken was smelling of sausage and burned garlic. Fry thinly sliced garlic in butter, add sausage and just enough water to steam: it was a dish Mr. Delchef had taught him. Bird wondered what had happened to Mr. Delchef. By now he had probably been taken away from that small, pallid Japanese girl and returned to his legation. Had he attempted violent resistance in their lair at the end of the blind alley? Had his girlfriend screamed in Japanese as incomprehensible to Mr. Delchef himself as to the legation people who had come to take him back? Finally, their only choice must have been to submit.

Bird gazed at the sports car. With the black hood on top of its scarlet body, the car looked like the torn flesh of a wound and scabs around it. Disgust stirred in Bird. The sky was dark, the air damp and swollen; a wind was clamoring. Rain would suffuse the air like mist and then a gust of wind would whirl it away into the distance and as suddenly it would return. Bird looked up at the trees billowing above the rooftops in their opulence of leaf and saw that the squalling rain had washed them to a somber yet truly vivid green. It was a green that transported him, as the traffic light had done at the highway intersection. Perhaps, he mused, he would see this kind of vibrant green when he lay on his deathbed. Bird felt as if he were about to be led to his own death at the hands of a shady abortionist. Not the baby.

The basket and baby clothes waited on the steps in front of the house. Bird gathered them up and stuffed them into the space behind the driver’s seat. Underwear and socks, a woolen top and pants, even a tiny cap: these were the things Himiko had taken so much time to select. Bird had been kept waiting a full hour; he had even begun to wonder if
Himiko hadn’t deserted him. He couldn’t understand why she had lavished such care on choosing clothes for a baby soon to die: a woman’s sensibilities were always queer.

“Bird, lunch is ready,” Himiko called from the bedroom window.

Bird found Himiko standing in the kitchen eating sausage. He peered into the frying pan and then pulled back, repulsed by the odor of garlic. Turning to Himiko, who was watching him curiously, he weakly shook his head. “If you have no appetite why don’t you take a shower?” The suggestion reeked of garlic.

“I think I will,” Bird said with relief: sweat had caked the dust on his body.

Bird circumspectly bunched his shoulders as he showered. A hot shower aroused him ordinarily, but now he experienced only a painful hammering of his heart. Bird shut his eyes tight in the warm rain of the shower, arched his head backward, consciously this time, and tried rubbing behind his ears with the undersides of his thumbs. A minute later, Himiko leaped to his side in the shower with her hair in a vinyl shower cap patterned with something like watermelons and began to scratch at her body with a bar of soap, so Bird stopped playing the game and left the bathroom. It was as he was drying himself, he heard the thud of something large and heavy hitting the ground outside. When he went to the bedroom window, he saw the scarlet sports car listing critically, like a ship about to sink. The right front tire was missing! Bird hurried into his clothes without bothering to dry his back and went out to inspect the car. He was aware of footsteps retreating down the alley, but he stopped to examine the damage instead of giving a chase. There was no trace of the tire, and the right headlight was shattered: someone had jacked up the MG, removed the tire, then stood on the fender and tilted the car so roughly to the ground that the shock had shattered the headlight. Under the car the jack lay like a broken arm.

“Somebody stole a tire,” Bird shouted to Himiko, still in the shower. “And one of the headlights is busted. I hope you have a spare!”

“In the back of the shed.”

“But who would steal one tire?”

“Remember the boy at the window that night, hardly more than a child? Well, that’s him being mean. He’s hiding somewhere near with the tire and I bet he’s watching us,” Himiko shouted back as if nothing had happened. “If we pretend not to be the least bit upset and make a
grand exit out of here, I bet we can make him cry in his hiding place, he’ll be so mortified. Let’s try it.”

“That’s fine if the car will run. I’ll see if I can get that spare on.”

Bird changed the tire, getting mud and grease all over his hands. The work made him sweatier than he had been before his shower. When he had finished he started the engine cautiously: nothing in particular seemed wrong. They might be a little late but certainly it would all be over before dusk, they wouldn’t need the headlights. Bird felt like another shower but Himiko was ready to leave; besides, he was so exasperated now that even the briefest delay would have been intolerable. They left as they were. As they drove out of the alley, someone behind them threw pebbles at the car.

“You come too!” Bird entreated when Himiko made no move to get out of the car. Together they hurried down the long corridor toward the intensive care ward, Bird clasping the basket, Himiko the baby’s clothes. Bird was aware of a special tension today, an aloofness in all the patients who passed them in the corridor. It was the influence of the rain whipping in on the rude wind and abruptly withdrawing as though pursued, and of the dull thunder in the distance. As Bird walked down the corridor with the basket in his arms, he searched for words with which to broach safely to the nurses the matter of the baby’s withdrawal from the hospital; gradually his consternation grew. But when he reached the ward it was known that he would take the baby with him. Bird was relieved. Even so, he maintained a wooden face and kept his eyes on the floor, responding as briefly as possible to procedural questions only. Bird was afraid of leaving the curious young nurses an opening to ask why he was taking the baby away without an operation or just where he intended to take him.

“If you’ll just take this card to the office and make the necessary payments,” the nurse said. “Meanwhile I’ll call the doctor in charge.”

Bird took the large card; it was a lewd pink.

“I brought some clothes for the baby—”

“We’ll need them, of course; I’ll take them now.” As she spoke, the nurse’s eyes unveiled her sharp disapproval. Bird handed over all the baby’s clothes at once; the nurse inspected them one by one and thrust back at him only the cap. Bird rolled it up sheepishly and stuffed it into his pocket. Then he peevishly turned to Himiko, who hadn’t noticed.

“What?”

“Nothing. I have to go to the office for a minute.”

“I’ll come too,” Himiko said hurriedly, as though afraid of being abandoned. Throughout the negotiations with the nurses, the two of them had been standing with their bodies wrenched around in such a way that the infants on the other side of the glass partition could not possibly enter their field of vision.

When the girl at the reception window had taken the pink card, she asked for Bird’s seal and said: “I see you’re leaving us—congratulations!”

Bird, neither affirming nor denying, nodded.

“And what name have you given your child?” the girl continued.

“We … haven’t decided yet.”

“At present the baby is registered simply as your first-born son, it would be a big help if we could have a name for our records.”

A name! thought Bird. Now, as in his wife’s hospital room, the idea was profoundly disturbing. Provide the monster with a name and from that instant it would seem more human, probably it would begin asserting itself in a human way. The difference between death while the monster was nameless and death after Bird had given it a name would mean a difference to Bird in the nature of the creature’s very existence.

“Even a temporary name you’re not certain about will do,” the girl said pleasantly, though her voice betrayed her stubbornness.

“It can’t hurt to name him, Bird,” Himiko broke in impatiently.

“I’ll call him Kikuhiko,” Bird said, remembering his wife’s words, then he showed the girl the characters to use.

The account settled, Bird got back nearly all the money he had left as security. The baby had consumed only diluted milk and sugar-water, and since even antibiotics had been withheld, its stay at the hospital had been economical beyond compare.

Bird and Himiko walked back down the corridor toward the intensive care ward.

“This is money I took out of savings for a trip to Africa in the first place. And the minute I decide to murder the baby and go to Africa with you, it’s back in my pocket again—” Bird spoke out of a tangle of feelings, not certain what he really wanted to say.

“Then we should actually use the money in Africa,” Himiko said easily. Then: “Bird, that name, Kikuhiko—I know a gay bar called
Kikuhiko, written with those same characters. The mama’s name is Kikuhiko.”

“How old a guy is he?”

“It’s hard to tell with faggots like that, four, maybe five years younger than you.”

“I bet he’s the same Kikuhiko I knew years ago. During the Occupation he had an affair with an American cultural officer and then he ran away to Tokyo.”

“What a coincidence! Bird, why don’t we go over there after!”

After,
Bird thought,
after
abandoning the baby with a shady abortionist!

Bird recalled abandoning his young friend Kikuhiko late one night in a provincial city. And now the baby he was about to abandon was also to be called Kikuhiko. So devious traps surrounded even the act of naming. For an instant Bird considered going back and correcting the name, but this intention was corroded instantly in the acid of enervation. Bird was left only with a need to inflict pain upon himself. “Let’s drink away the night at the gay bar Kikuhiko,” he said. “It will be a wake.”

Bird’s baby—Kikuhiko had been carried around to this side of the glass partition and he was lying in his basket in the wooly baby clothes Himiko had chosen for him. Next to the basket the pediatrician in charge was waiting self-consciously for Bird. Bird and Himiko faced the doctor across the basket. Bird could feel the shock Himiko received when she looked down and saw the baby. It was a size larger now, its eyes open like deep creases in its crimson skin and staring at them, sidelong. Even the lump on the baby’s head seemed to have grown considerably. It was redder than its face, lustrous, tumescent. Now that its eyes were open, the baby had the shriveled, ancient look of the hermits in the Southern Scrolls, but it definitely lacked a human quality, probably because the frontal portion of its head that ought to have counterpoised the lump was still severely pinched. The baby was oscillating its tightly clenched fists, as if it wanted to flee its basket.